1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic information management, and more particularly to a system and method for automatically managing information in a processor-driven device including but not limited to personal digital assistants, handheld computers, and mobile communication terminals.
2. Background of the Related Art
As mobile terminals become more popular, users are expected to rely on supplementary functions to a greater extent. These functions include, for example, an address book, phone book, memo management, and schedule management functions as well as others. To support these functions, mobile terminals are equipped to store large amounts of diverse information in their memories.
Although supplementary functions of mobile terminals are being continuously added to meet user satisfaction, methods for managing information to support these functions are not being improved sufficiently or at the same rate. More specifically, information in a mobile terminal is stored and managed separately and different forms of that information are not associated with each other in terms of their use. In addition, in existing mobile terminals, in order for a user to use desired information, the user must tediously search lower levels of a main tree structure for a corresponding supplementary function or must use a search function in a corresponding menu.
Consider, for example, the case where a user has an appointment with person A and stores an appointment location and time in a schedule management menu of his mobile terminal. Later, when the user checks the schedule, only the stored content is displayed, without any information about person A. Thus, in order to place a phone call to person A, the user must separately search the phone number of person A from a phone book menu in the mobile terminal.
Thus, in related-art systems, while the user is using a certain function, the currently executed function must be terminated when related information is needed to be searched. The desired information then needs to be separately searched by executing a different function, and then the original function needs to be executed for the intended operation. As a result, convenience of the user has not been improved compared to other improved functions. On the contrary, the user's inconvenience has been increased because the user needs to search and obtain the desired information by performing several different functions.
The above references are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.